


the circle ends.

by arabellagaleotti



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Origin Story, Alternate Universe, Assassins & Hitmen, BAMF Maria Stark, BAMF Tony Stark, Competent Tony Stark, F/F, F/M, Gen, Genius Tony Stark, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kid Tony Stark, Maria Stark Is More Than A Housewife, Maria Stark's A+ Parenting, Maria Stark's Good Parenting, Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark Friendship, Origin Story, Pre-Canon, Propaganda, Red Room (Marvel), Russia don't kill me, Teenager Tony Stark, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark-centric, Young Tony Stark, maria stark is a black widow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2019-12-26 05:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 17,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18276938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arabellagaleotti/pseuds/arabellagaleotti
Summary: “What is your mission?” Madame asks her a week later, in a empty airport terminal.Mariya laughs. It is high and delicate and when she bats her eyelashes right after it looks simpering and sweet, “to make Howard Stark fall in love with me.”OR,Maria Stark was born Mariya Chernov, from Russia. She was raised and trained in the Red Room.Maria Stark was not just a housewife.





	1. начало. beginning.

Mariya Chernov was born 1950, in Volgograd, Russia. Her parents weren’t married, not in a relationship, her father didn't know her mothers name, for gods sake. Her father was an Italian businessman, who left as soon as he heard the news, never to be seen again. The other a farmgirl who’s hopes of university were dashed with her growing belly. Once born, Mariya was given away, into foster care.

 

Mariya doesn't remember much of her life Before. Just blurry faces and nondescript rooms, moving around in foster care. She doesn't remember anything of her mother. 

 

When she is four and already showing supreme levels of intelligence, the Red Room acquires another asset.

 

Two years later, she meets Madame for the first time. She is cold and regal, her features are not particularly beautiful but not particularly ugly. Mariya decides she likes her, right off the bat. Too many people are neutral, she thinks, they shrug and say _‘nothing i can do about it, sorry.’_ Madame is... well, she is cold. Colder than three am with only a ratty blanket for protection, but she is clear about it. You do not walk into a snowstorm blind, after all. It’s the midnight freeze that gets you, not the clouds, it’s the crystal sky.

 

“To succeed here,” Madame says, voice high and as far as a mother figure that these girls are seeking as she can get, “you must do two things. You must live and you must learn. Live with the cold, live with the death. Live with each other. Learn to fight, learn to lie. Learn to dance. Learn to manipulate. If you do these things, you will be welcomed into the grand halls of _Россия_.”

 

The girls nod, frail in their pants and loose shirts, bones still growing, faces still chubby, hair braided. They shift on bare feet, toes flexing against sparring mats.

 

“Fight,” Madame orders, and they do.

 

They spend all day in the red, in the training room where the mats are plasticy and bright, _firetruck red,_ someone whispers, but Mariya doesn't know what that means. The walls are dark and dusky, as close as black as you can get without crossing over.

 

“Good,” Madame says, as she breaks her first neck. “Again.”

 

She practices her ballet steps every spare moment, she wakes early and practices her moves over and over while still chained to her bed, watching the sun crawl into the windows and along the floor. She doesn't know why she likes it so much, but the easy, repetitive motion calms her mind, gives her a focus that the other girls seem to lack.

 

Madame looks at her differently than the others, a little warmer, a little colder, a little harsher, a little softer. The other girls do not question, but they do notice.

 

She is jumped three times in the showers before she kills enough to scare them off.

 

* * *

 

There's another girl on the program. She's small but older than the others. Her name is Tatianna. She has reddy-gold hair hair that shines in the light. They smile at each other, sometimes.

 

In their second and third year, they are allowed free time. It's rare, sporadic, but if they do especially well that day, they have a few hours of something close to relaxation while the others run drills or go on training excursions high in the mountains, where the air freezes your lungs and frost gathers in your hair if you get it wet.

 

Usually, they would read, there’s a sacred bookshelf in the corner of one of the rooms, containing a few texts in Russian and English. Usually they aren't allowed to touch it, but Madame makes an exception for them, the good work they do, their use to the regime.

 

Other times Tatianna would braid her hair, tight against her head. When the others could not hear, she used to whisper about how her mother taught her, she thinks.

 

Mariya must have had a mother too.

 

She, unlike the others, cannot remember anything, not even a whisper of a defined memory. She is blank. Russia is her mother.

 

Maria imagines her and Tatianna, living in a flat in New York or London or Paris, and sighs with happiness. They would be normal, no Russian accents, no deadly knowledge, thinking red is only a color.

 

She would be named Ada and Tatianna would be called Madison, normal names, _Western_ names.

 

One day, she tells her. It's quietly, murmured into the hush of dawn while the others are in the showers. Even in the dim light, she can see her eyes shine with happiness.

 

From then, on their stolen afternoons, they call each other those names when the others cannot hear. Mariya sometimes closes her eyes and whispers it to herself in her bed when the others asleep and her only grounding point is the handcuffs digging into her wrist. Ada and Madison. Madison and Ada. AdaMadison. MadisonAda.

 

One day, Madame announces a new training exercise.

 

They have to kill each other.

 

They stand in the training room, mats spongy underneath their feet. There are benches like gym bleachers against the wall. They sit there, silent, watching the two standing on the mat. One is shivering with fear. She will die.

 

The weak always die.

 

* * *

 

She dies.

 

* * *

 

“You two.” Madame’s chilling gaze sets on them. Mariya feels frozen in molasses, her heartbeat thuds slow in her ears, each beat echoing like a drum, lasting a thousand seconds. She is scared.

 

Tatianna looks at her, and she looks back.

 

They must do it.

 

The mats are cold against her feet, and the air is frozen in her lungs. Her brain is a rabbit, hunched and quaking with fear. She does not want to kill her.

 

She will have to.

 

Tatianna will have to.

 

They circle around each other, like sharks.

 

 _I’m sorry,_ Mariya mouths, and Tatianna only stares. There is nothing in her gaze but acceptance.

 

* * *

 

Tatianna — she, she does not have the precision Mariya does, the balance and focus from her ballet she practices so religiously.

 

* * *

 

Friendship is banned in the Red Room.


	2. azrael

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> there is a man in the red.

There is a man here. 

 

_ A man.  _

 

The girls uproar — well, for them, they do. For anyone else, whispers sweep the room. They cut off when Madame shoots a harsh glare into the crowd. 

 

It's the first time any of them can remember seeing a man, they almost forgot they were out there. 

 

The man stares at them blankly, but something tells Mariya that he doesn't really see. His face is almost like a graveyard, with mausoleum cobwebs in his eyes and the same kind of hushed, blanketing silence that you get surrounded by death. 

 

“This is the Winter Soldier,” Madame tells them. “He is here to help you train.” This time actual  _ titters _ rise. 

  
  


* * *

 

She's not sure how long he stays, there isn't a clear definition of time in the Red, but it has to be a few months. 

 

He mostly watches, never says anything, demonstrates sometimes. He seems there more for Madame than them. 

 

Madame lets them use him as a dummy, practice their moves on him. 

 

Then, then the fight comes. When they enter the training room, the bleachers are back — the same ones from that dreaded exercise a year or so ago. Mariya still remembers Tatianna. She sits in the same place, just to push a thumb into the bruise. 

 

He is standing on the mat, looking at them with the same dead gaze.

 

This time, when the first girl tries to practice, he fights back. She is caught off guard, she loses. 

 

The next is more prepared. She still loses. 

 

All of them lose, until it is just Mariya sitting on the bench, a few of the shier girls around her. This is more than a test of physical strength. This is also a test of social. If she stays, Madame will label her as weak, and even if she wins every fight from here to eternity, she will be stuck with that name, with that legacy. 

 

She stands.    
  


Their fight is faster than the others, not in duration, but in their movements. She can barely see anything but the blur of hands, of her twisting as she tries to take him down. She could almost close her eyes, get buoyed by the adrenaline, let muscle memory take over. It's an electrifying kind of excitement. She flips over his back, pushes him to a knee, places her hands around his neck. He stiffens, makes to move, maybe to hit her, maybe to shove her off her feet, but she twitches her fingers around his pulse point and he stops. 

 

“Well done,” Madame says. The fight is won. 


	3. the art of emptiness

By the time she is fifteen, it is clear she is the strongest, fastest, smartest.

The other girls have dwindled, only a few are left. They have grown with each other since six, and now, nine years later, they have killed and seen each other kill. They have held hands and hit with those same. 

Mariya stares them all down at the graduation ceremony, the death ceremony. Half shall die here. Half shall live here. Half shall close their eyes and only see black. Half will open their eyes and see the greatness of their empire. 

  
The blows are quick and fast, lined with a kind of desperation unseen before today. Mariya ducks and parries, strikes like a snake, and the girl goes down. She finishes the jo b.

 

She has won. 

 

The empire is great. 

  
  
  


* * *

 

She performs missions for the motherland, so many she can hardly remember. 

 

She loses her virginity to a balding diplomat from Turkmenistan when she is sixteen years old. 

 

After, she sits in her barracks and stares at the bruises on her breasts, on her neck. “Is this service?” She asks herself, and the silence says,  _ “все град Мать Россия.” _

* * *

 

Next are assassinations, whether from a sniper’s bullet or poison lipstick.

Espionage, where she smiles and uses a fake name and steals and tricks and  _ burns _ as she flies in the eyes of the nation.

 

She creeps in glittering balls and long banquets, slips around in the shadows, sends a knife into someone’s back with a flick of her fingers, kills another three in the panic. 

 

She crouches on the rooftops of Moscow, waiting for the rebellion leader to step into her line of sight. He does, and is carrying a little girl. 

 

She shoots them both. No need for a vengeful daughter to cause problems later. 

 

She stops another revolt in Hungary by killing the leaders, all eight of them, sending the ranks scattering. She kills another ten or so of the higher-ups, just to make sure. She forgets herself sometimes, gets lost in the haze of red. 

* * *

  
  


She stands in the grimy, tiled bathroom in some shitty motel that the KGB rented out for her. She just killed a politician, poisoned his wine as he laughed ‘with’ her. They never laugh with her, it’s always at her, even if it’s not meant to be. Men laugh at women, especially women made to be laughed at.

 

Even with the thundering shower behind her, sending steam and water mist into the air, the cold permits everything, down to her bones. She shivers, absentmindedly. She feels numb. Is that normal?

 

She stares at the fogged-up mirror, condensation dripping off the glass. She reaches forward with one hand, swipes a palm across the glass. Her face comes into view. 

 

She supposes she is beautiful, in the conventional kind of way, young and skinny and smiling. She lips are full, but where they were rosy, they are now tongued beige. Nothing some lipstick won't cover up. Her cheeks are not beaming like they used to be, the apples are not polished and red, plucked from a tree, but rather, withered, forgotten in a fruit bowl. Nothing some blush won’t hide. 

 

Still, her hair is dark, curling under her ears. Her eyelashes are long and her eyes are the kind of color that can only be explained through long-winded paragraphs, using many adjectives and frankly too much time, both to read and to write. Let’s just say they are brown. 

 

She looks...sad, Mariya thinks.. she's not really sure why, or when, but it's there. Underneath her breath, she chants,  _ все град Мать Россия. _

 

The words echo around her and she closes her eyes.

 

All hail. 

  
  


* * *

 

When she is eighteen, she stands in a field, it smells like grass and nature, above her the sky is blue, there is birdsong and blooms of wildflowers and she can see where children have played in the grass, tracks made from their stamping feet. 

 

This is a happy place, a peaceful place. She would have grown up in a place like this, if her mother had kept her.

 

She wonders what kind of girl she would be, definitely not who she is. Maybe something, someone softer. Maybe Ada, maybe someone else. 

 

She turns away, and looks at the burning village. 

 

They will be here to pick her up soon. 

 

She can hear helicopter blades. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> translations:
> 
> все град Мать Россия: all hail mother russia.


	4. when things end, something begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> svetlana alliluyeva was the daughter of stalin, and she's actually had a really cool life. 
> 
> she was born in 1926, so a couple years after her father took power. she was married a bunch of times and had a couple kids but that doesn't really matter with what i mentioned:
> 
> so, when she met this indian dude Brajesh at hospital, and they fell in love, but he died (cos he was in hospital duh) and she went to india to i dunno. make peace or something??? anyway after living there for three months she gave herself in to the indian government. she lived in the UK and america and died a few years ago.
> 
> idk man i just like her. like, she caused all this mess when she defected because like Stalin's Daughter !!!! y'know 
> 
>  
> 
> THIS IS A BASIC SUMMARY. GO RESEARCH YOURSELF. (if you want, not telling you what to do)

 

She is sent to infiltrate Svetlana Alliluyeva’s closest circle. There are suspicions she is going to defect. She is meant to stop her. 

 

They meet in Moscow, totally by coincidence, of course. Svetlana walking when a mugger bursts out at her, steals her bag. She is thrown to the ground among shouts of outrage. The mugger takes off running. Mariya clotheslines him at the end of the alley and returns her purse. 

 

A month later, they are best friends. 

 

Mariya was drawn in more than expected, by her thoughts and speech and ideas. She’s like a flame in night, a mind among mindless, even with who she is, a daughter of Stalin, she is pure of the Russian way. Dirty, she means, dirtied and compromised by Western ideology. Of course, that is what she means. 

 

Svetlana laughs at one of her jokes she had to memorise for any situation, and she feels a kind of warmness in her chest, alien since...forever. 

 

She wonders if this is betraying her country, her mission, but doesn't come up with an answer. 

 

Later that night, after dinner on Svetlana’s couch, next to the fireplace with food in their bellies and wine in their hands, Mariya feels the kind of normalcy she’s always craved more than anything. She’s  jeopardize d missions just to watch a couple wander through a street together, or a mother and daughter look at clothes in a shop window. 

 

Now, here she is, after dinner with a friend, sitting at her place and talking. It is wonderful. She closes her eyes and wishes she and Tatianna could have done this, she would have loved it more than anything, she was more obvious than Mariya about her desire for a normal life. Their friendship was not the only thing she was killed for. 

 

“My father is dead,” she says, hushed, quietly, like it’s the greatest of secrets. “He has been dead for how many years now? Fourteen? I should be free. Yet, Brajesh is gone, I shall never get him back.”

 

There was silence between them, Svetlana’s outburst fading like a firework. 

 

“Then, at least, say goodbye,” Mariya whispered, her voice rough. 

 

This is against her orders. 

 

“What do you mean?” Svetlana asked. 

 

“Go to his homeland, just like Russia is for you, India is for him. Scatter his remains, stay there for a while. Learn, live.”

 

She doesn't care. 

 

There was silence. “What if I don’t come back?”

 

Mariya shrugs, “then, I will have to believe you are really free.”

 

“I have a son and a daughter,” Svetlana argues weakly.

 

“I’m sure they will be happy for you. You have given them life, and now, if you want to live yours, they should not stop you.”

 

“You’re crazy.”

 

“Crazy, me?” Mariya laughs, high on this combination of late-night air and a dizzying dose of vanilla life, “whoever said!”

 

Svetlana smiles. “in this regime of oppression? Yes, you are, for even daring to think these things, lest speak them. It’s an you are an enigma, smart and minded.”

 

“Shush,” Mariya hushes, “fear their ears.”

 

Svetlana reaches for her hand, “come with me,” she persuades. “Please.”

 

“Won’t it be suspicious? Two women like us?”

 

“ _ Любовь,  _ you are young enough to be my daughter.”

 

“I do not know,” Mariya says, chewing her lip. ‘What if we get caught?”

 

“We will not get caught. Do you know how many flee this place?”

 

Mariya plummets to earth, she remembers with a sudden bout of clarity who she is, why she was sent her, exactly how telling Svetlana to go is a bad idea. She forgot she was Mariya, got lost in the daydream of Ada. 

 

“No,” she dismisses suddenly, extinguishing the warmness between them. “I can’t, and neither should you.”

 

“What has spooked you?”

 

“Who I am, Lana,” she says. “Who you are. It’s insanity. You’ll die.”

 

“Better dead than…” she waves her arm in a vague culmination of everything, “this.”

 

“No, better alive and with your children.”

 

Svetlana signs, looks into the fireplace. “I would like to think I am mentoring you, but I’m afraid you are the one teaching me.”

 

“The mother and the child, indeed.”

 

“Do you want a child?” she asks, and Mariya balls. She has heard rumours, rumours she stubbornly ignored, that  _ all  _ widows get a sterilization done.

 

She is as fertile as earth. She doesn't know why. 

 

“I do not know,” she says, “maybe, one day.” It is true, she has watched mothers push their prams or swaddle their babies to their chests, it is a normal part of a normal life, motherhood, but she knows that it will not be allowed inside  _ her _ mother, Russia. 

 

“Hm,” Svetlana hums, looking towards the fire, “It is the most wonderful feeling.”

 

Mariya swallows, “I can imagine.”

 

“Hopefully, maybe, one day, you will not have to,” Svetlana parrots, smiling.

 

“Yes,” Mariya smiles. 

 

A week later, Svetlana requests to visit India, release her informal husbands ashes. 

 

Mariya tells them to let her go. She knows why Svetlana is going, and it’s more than solving her grief for Brajesh. She doesn't care the consequences.

 

Another three months, and Svetlana is defected. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> see ya next time i can be bothered to update this. bye!!


	5. proud?

  


Madame invites her to a cafe in Moscow.

 

She comes, and warms her palms on the mug of tea she doesn't drink, looks at the ordinary people mill around her, laughing, chatting, eating. She wonders if she could ever be like them, tries to mimic their movements, Silently, she names herself Ada and pretends to be the girl with blonde hair and blue eyes, leaning over a table, talking to a boy with a goofy grin that reminds her of a golden retriever, happy go lucky, content to live in the simplest of ways.

 

“What are you doing?” comes a sharp voice. Madame.

 

Mariya whips around, “nothing, Madame,” she says, bows her head.

 

Madame considers her for a moment, then sits. She orders a coffee and then, once the waiter is gone, leans over the table and says,“I have something for you, Mariya.”

 

“What?” Mariya asks, not showing any anticipation at all. She picks up Ada again, but doesn't follow blue-blonde girl with her eyes.

 

Madame smiles, “there is a rich man in America. He is looking for a wife.”

 

* * *

  


“What is your mission?” Madame asks her a week later, in an empty airport terminal. Her voice bounces around and Mariya marvels at how the sound moves, how the room looks silvery and shadowy in the moonlight, how she can feel the ghosts of the people who walk though here everyday around her.

 

She laughs. It is high and delicate and when she bats her eyelashes right after it looks simpering and sweet, “to make Howard Stark fall in love with me.”

 

She has seen picture so him, of what he does, how he gives a bracelet to every girl he fucks. Apart from that, though, she likes the way he smiles. There are a few different ones, charming, wide beaming, tailored for the American public. Another is genuine, successful, clapping himself on the back as he accepts awards. The last is like razor blades, slick and sharp and all knowing, charming at the same time. She likes this one the most.

 

“You have learnt well, Mariya. I am proud.”

 

Mariya, now Maria, bows her head, a sign of respect. To be proud is the highest compliment. She has a great future with her country, she knows. 

 

“Go, Maria,” Madame tells her, and Maria steps onto the tarmac, looks at the plane waiting to take her from Moscow to New York.

* * *

 

Maria Collins-Carbonell was also born in March 18th, 1950, only she was born in Tuscany, to a loving father and a loving mother and a house on a hill. She grew up happy, running with the other children, wild in the vineyards or into the sea. When she was fifteen, she left for America, to go to university.

 

This is not true.

 

Maria Collins-Carbonell is a fake name, a fake life. She was born, yes, but that baby, the one with dark eyes and a dark puff of hair on it’s naked head, with the loving mother and father? She died at the age of four.

 

Sickness takes so many.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi so i have a praise kink please leave a comment


	6. rich man in america.

* * *

  


They meet as planned, her rather spectacularly bumping into him in New York. They both go flying, her purse landing with a clatter, spilling its contents. He gets up first, just like choreographed, and offers a hand and a brazen smile. She smiles back, cutely, delicately, helps herself up with his hand but doesn't seem too heavy.

 

“Why thank you, sir,” she says, acts likes he doesn't know who he is.

 

“No problem, ma’am,” he says, picks up her purse, starts gathering her things. They’re all lipstick and perfume and a pen or dossier or two just to hint she’s a professional woman.

 

He hands it back to her after a moment, then gets up off the dirty grey pavement.

 

“That’s very kind of you” she says, flutters her flashes, quirks her lips in a slightly unique smile.

 

“I was the one that bowled into you,” he flirts. She smiles, looks down bashfully.

 

“Yes, sorry about that.” She looks up again, wearing a clear, fresh smile like the first day of spring, like your childhood best friend. “I can be  _awfully_  clumsy.”

 

“I run into the same problem,” Howard says, his eyes seeking hers. She allows hers to be found.

 

This is a big deal, for her, for the nation. She cannot blow this. Russia is counting on her. Madame is counting on her. She will — cannot — fail.

 

“I’m Maria, by the way” she says, extends a hand. She allows a sliver of something sharper in her genial smile.

 

He catches on to it and smiles back widely, his showman smile, and says, “Howard.”

* * *

  


He takes her to a movie theater for their first date and they laugh and laugh and laugh, not even about about the movie, about Howard whispering jokes and horrible puns, even when people turn around and hush at them, Maria’s still cackling into her popcorn, inhaling salt-butter air with every sucked-in breath.

 

Eventually they take the cue from other grumbling movie-goers, and stagger outside, wave sorry to the attendant though tears of mirth and step out into the cool New York night air.

 

The end up in this terrible, obscure 24 hour diner with leather booths and sticky tables. The coffee is burnt and the fries that Howard orders are greasy, but it's cheap and nobody recognises them — him. She is not recognizable yet.

 

At the end of the night, when Howard is dropping her off at her apartment, like a true gentleman, New York is strangely quiet. The traffic has stilled for the moment, and not many are out on the streets. They don't say much, just sit in silence Mariya wears like a second skin. She is used to the sound between heartbeats, the quiet. Howard isn't, he keeps staring, not at her, but at the street, at the pigeons and parked cars and newsstands and apartment blocks with their fire escapes, some with swinging legs sticking out over the side; like he’s never been in a city before. It’s jarring to see him so silent.

 

She comes across a new thought. Maria — Mariya? Whatever you want to call her, she has never been loud before. Howard is loud, that is his personality, the fabric of his being. Maria will have to shout sometimes. She doesn't find herself anxious at the thought.

 

They finally reach her apartment, some rickety old block that makes sense for her, an unmarried woman from brown descent, to live in.

 

“Here we are,” he says, acclimatising to the noise, in an odd way.

 

“Yes,” she just says back. Her apartment upstairs is not much to look at, a bedframe and small kitchen, a lounge in between with a bathroom attached. It is nothing compared to Howard's mansions, she is sure.  

 

He holds open the door, as there is nothing else to say. It’s not a bad thing, they’ve already said everything there is to say. Maria’s recited her backstory perfectly, and Howard returned one undoubtedly as altered. The Jewish, son of immigrants, poor, brown origin story isn't the best to sell guns to white, rich, capitalist America, to say the least. 

 

“Howard!” she calls, right before the door swings shut. He turns on the pavement, looking at her like someone looks at a piece of art; curiously, looking for deeper meaning, appreciating. “I — this was fun.”  _The best night I’ve ever had,_ she adds silently, and watches him smirk.

 

“It was,” he agrees, and steps forward quickly to press a sliver of paper to her hand. “Call me.”

 

“Okay,” she smiles, and lets the door close.

 

She listens to his footsteps retreat and sighs, looks at the slip of paper in her hand.

 

Mission accomplished. Well, part of it.

  
  


* * *

 

Three years later, they are married. It’s a beautiful ceremony, certainly, but what is truly beautiful is what happens just before the pomp and the pictures and the white and the roses. Maria is waiting in a little room above the church, wearing a white silk slip with her hair in rollers and her makeup done, lips lined.

 

She shrieks when Howard enters, turns to hide herself. “It’s bad luck!” she cries, hiding behind a couch. 

 

“Maybe.” He can hear his smirk in his voice.

 

“ _Howard!_ ” She complains, still refusing to look at him.

 

“ _Maria_ ,” he teases back.

 

“Get the bloody hell out of this room!’ she yells, giggling now.

 

“I don’t think I will,” he says back. She hears his footsteps creak over the floor, and hides her smile in her ducked shoulder, as if Madame is still watching.

 

“Come on, Maria. Rules are meant to be broken.”

 

“Oh, are they now?” she taunts, times his lunge, parries out of the way. His arms come up empty and she’s behind him. He whirls around.

 

“How did you get over there?!”

 

She only giggles, walks forward, kisses him long and deep and like she means it (maybe she does. She doesn't think about that).

 

He growls happily and pulls her flush to him. She pulls away minutely, but winds a bare leg around his.

 

He smiles, dips his head and rests his forehead against hers, and she can almost, _almost_ believe that this moment, this bubble, this sacred space of air between them is hers and his and their's for all of eternity, that they own almost-kissing and almost-breathing and almost-being in love. 

 

They don't. She doesn't own anything. Howard might, if you count his cars and houses and yachts. 

 

In their moment, their space, their separate timeline, consisting of this and this only, he whispers, “I didn't think I’d ever be as happy as I am with you.”

 

She ignores the warmth blossom in her chest like an unfolding flower and just kisses him again, soft and sweet like silk or lace or something pale and pure and beautiful.

 

“I have to get ready,” she says when she draws back.

 

“Okay,” and this is the quietest she’s ever seen him since their first date, since that walk home.

 

“Okay,” she mirrors, and he separates himself from her and walks out the door.

 

There you go, Russia. Another part done.


	7. i love the boy

“I love the boy,” she tells Madame six years later, in a seedy motel room outside of New York. Madame has not changed, she still looks the same, if not a little greyer, a little older. She wears her age well, Maria thinks, like a fur coat. She, herself, has changed quite a lot. Now she wears dresses and sunglasses and necklaces, not tutus and barefeet and silence. 

 

“What one?”

 

She takes a long time to answer. “Both.” It is true. And she does. Howard, Howard may be crazy, but it's in the best of ways, and she...she can't go back to silence. And Anton — Anthony, to the rest of the world — is small and smart and  _ brilliant _ , perhaps takes after her more than Howard, because he can manipulate so well, even at two. He just blinks, or wobbles his lip — he can even cry on command —  and there you go, an extra biscuit from Ana. 

 

“Fool,” Madame hisses, stalking away to the other side of the room. She holds a hand to her temple, as if her head hurts.

 

She lowers her head, perhaps in shame, perhaps to hide the defiance in her eyes. “Maybe.”

 

“There is no  _ maybe _ ,’” she whirls around, fury lining her face like fire, “you are a  _ traitor _ .”

 

Maria raises her eyes, letting that defiance spill out like gasoline to Madame's fury. “I am only if you are Russia’s most devoted.”

 

“This is one of our most important missions, you understand?” Madame growls, “that child, he is the future; of Russia, of America.”

 

“I know,” Maria replies mutinously, almost smug.

 

“Then why are you doing this? Have we — I — not be kind to you? Saved you from the claws of poverty? Taught you everything you know? _Sent you to marry a millionaire?”_

 

“And I am thankful,” she says, leaning forward, face slanted to stare into Madame’s, cruel and hawk-beaked as it is. “You know I am, but…Anton, he is — is the biggest thing I’ve ever seen. He has the power of Russia in him as well as the power of America. He is a star, born to a liar and a genius. He has a terrible power inside him, and the ability for it to be terrible. His destiny is written in the sky, in the earth. I want that destiny to be  _ good _ .”

 

“And his service to our country is not good?”

 

“It is not my country anymore.”

 

_ “How dare you,” _ Madame snarls, right in her face. Mariya does not blink, does not flinch, only stares into her eyes and tries to remember the ballet moves she had been taught so long ago.  “You  _ пошлость.” _

 

“Your country — the motherland? — her womb is bitter and frozen, the milk from her breasts is poison. I do not want my child to grow in the arms of a cold nation,” Maria says, holding her head up high, proud. 

 

“And America is any warmer?” Madame says haughtily.

 

Maria shrugs, “they at least pretend to be.”

 

Madame shakes her head, almost looking sad. “You are more of a fool than I thought.”

 

“You've already said,” Maria says primly, gathering her bag, tucking a dark curl of hair behind her ear.

 

“I meant that I’d let you leave here alive.”

 

She only smiles evenly, just before Madame comes in hard with a punch to her face. Mariya dodges, tries to undercut her, dropping to her hands and sweeping her legs out from under her. 

 

Madame nearly falls, then catches herself on a cabinet and kicks Mariya hard across the stomach. She grunts, rolls back and comes at her again, relentless. 

 

That's the thing Madame liked about her, even as a scared six-year-old, she did not stop in the face of fear, of challenge. She’d just keep going, practicing her moves, putting up with the bullying until she could show them better. Now, that same trait is being used against her.

 

“Bitch,” Madame hisses, and they are sparring, hands flying, blocking each other. She lands a punch and Mariya stumbles back, holding her jaw. She turns, using the wall to link her legs around Madame’s neck, they go crashing to the ground where Mariya gains the upper hand, straddling the older woman. 

 

She traps her hands, leans over her face, so a dark curtain of hair falls around them, pants out, “you underestimate me.”

 

“A mother’s love for her child is dangerous,” Madame hisses, “that's why I take that love and burn it. I should have burnt  _ you.”  _

 

“You should have,” Mariya agrees, “but I always was your favourite, even if you’ll never admit it.”

 

With that, Madame throws herself in motion, freeing a hand and using it to land a solid punch to the gut, the air wheezing out of Mariya’s lungs. She flips them around and they fight for another while. 

 

Eventually they stumble apart, circling like feral cats in an alleyway fight.

 

“You  _ were _ my favourite, yes,” Madame says, and there is maybe some sadness there, lost among the haze of whatever this is. “You were the closest thing to a daughter I’ve ever had.”

 

“You treated me like shit,” Mariya spits back.

 

She shakes her head, “no. I spared you from so much. You got the best missions, the most training, more food, I gave you free time, I went hard on the girls that bullied you, I gave you the opportunity of motherhood like you gave me.”

 

“You are not my mother!” Mariya cries, “you made me kill Tatianna!”

 

“I gave you all life! Without me, you’d be some poor girl working as a hooker or a slave!”

 

“Are those girls still alive, then? Where is the greatness, the light of the  _ Россия?”  _ she asks rhetorically, “Russia killed them, and I know they're dead. All of them.”

 

Madame snarls, on the defence, “you are my worst failure. I am ashamed, not proud any longer.” 

 

Those words, the one she had prized for so long, even after she had her first, loud, date with Howard, held her new-born child in her arms and thought,  _ ‘no, not this time.’  _ They have fallen apart in her hands like dust. The last frail vestiges of her alliance to Madame and to Russia are shattered in a moment. 

 

Maria stumbles back, the words cutting harder than they should. She opens the door and runs for her car, only bothering to tug on her sunglasses before racing out of the dingy parking lot. Her speedometer doesn't drop below fifty the entire way home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> пошлость: means vulgar, basically a prostitute or whore.
> 
> thanks for reading!
> 
> leave a comment/kudos!


	8. the prelude

 

Maria is walking through a corridor late one night. Howard is in the arctic; looking for Captain America, Jarvis and Ana are in their cottage, eating creme bruleé and listening to Benny Goodman, and Tony is tucked into bed.

 

All is right. All is normal and well and good, but...she's tired. 

 

She is tired of lying; about who she is, why is is here. To Tony, to Howard, to the world. 

 

She is tired of being careful not to get too close to Howard's friends, liars and spies they all are, like her. Still, that Peggy Carter looks to have her hands full trying to fight back sexist scepticism. She knows a bit about that. She might offer some support. As long as she’s careful, doesn't let anything slip, it should be okay. Tony could use some more people in his life, three or four isn’t enough. 

 

Something creaks behind her. She freezes, slips off her shoes. She always fought better in bare feet. 

 

When she turns, there is a man standing in the doorway. She doesn't flinch or gasp or make a sound, just blinks, and offers a coy little smile. It's better for them to see the woman in her before the highly-trained operative. 

 

Just like that, the man charges, knocking her to the ground. Mariya uses the momentum to swing herself up, wrap her legs around his neck, listens for the crack. As soon as he is dead, another has appeared, she kills that one too, until two are on her and as she’s smashing a vase into the wall to use as a knife, she catches sight of a small figure in the doorway, holding the frame and staring. 

 

“Anton,” Maria gasps, her hands slippery with blood. 

 

One of the men turns, sees him and grins. 

 

“No!” she screams, and lets a sharp piece of china fly from her fingers, embedding in his neck. He falls back on the wall, gurgling on his own blood. 

 

Mariya tackles the other one, managing to get on top. “ _ Дезертир _ ,” he hisses, eyes full of hate, as she drives the shard into his neck.

 

Maria looks up as soon as he’s stopped moving, eyes fixing on Tony, not the four bodies littered around her like broken dolls. There is blood on her hands, she knows, not just literally. The assasian's life-blood is pouring over them, getting stuck in her engagement ring. 

 

“Mama?” Anton asks, curious to the end.

 

She gets up, not minding the run in her stockings or her rumpled state and runs over to him, collapsing to her knees and pulling him into a tight hug so she can hear his hammering heart and he can hear hers. 

 

“Oh, Anton, oh, Anton,” Maria weeps into his dark head, holding him close. Her hands leave blood on his clothes, but she doesn't care, in this moment. He is safe. That is what matters. 

 

“Why were those men here?” he asks, eyes fixed over her shoulder.

 

"They wanted to hurt me, Anton,” she whispers, turns his head to stop him looking. “When someone wants to hurt you, you stop them. This is how I stopped them.”

 

“Okay, Mama,” Anthony says, him looking into her face, her looking into his, they are almost carbon copies, he has her eyes and hair and mouth, dark and soulful and untelling. He has Howard's brain, though, and she loves him even more for that. 

 

“Don’t forget that, baby,” she tell him, eyes big and wide and serious. “Don't you forget that.”

 

"I won't, Mama. I won't," he promises.

 

"Good, baby. Good." She hugs him again, tight and hopes it's enough. 

 

She knows it won't be. 

 

She'll have to do more, then. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> translations:
> 
> Дезертир means traitor.
> 
> sorry for the mix-up last chapter!


	9. бытие. a higher state of being

She teaches him to fight, but also ballet. They use it as a warm-up, but, often it turns into more, and they dance and dance, around the gym, with Anton laughing and laughing, trying to copy his mother’s graceful movements, succeeding only slightly. He's clumsy like his father, agile in only his brain. 

 

They do train, though. Kicks and punches and special moves like wrapping your legs around men's necks, choke-holds and flips. Tony takes to it like a bird to flight, a fish to water, like it’s his natural element, in that gym, the light slanted through the windows, the thudding of bodies on mats, of a low voice telling what to do. If he was a girl, if he was born into Russia, Maria thinks he might have been the deadliest thing to ever tear though the world in ways unseen.

 

She teaches him how to flip a man three times bigger onto his back, no matter the circumstance. She teaches him to use every inch of his strength and then some. She teaches him all the things she knows and desperately wishes she knows  _ more _ , just to try and keep him safe. 

 

“Live and learn, Anton. Those are the rules,” she says, dabbing at his scraped knee, it stings, she knows, but his face is empty of pain. “Now, you learn. Next, when you have to use this, you live.”

 

He nods, and Maria takes a moment to admire her son. Her brazen beautiful sun of a child. His skin takes after Howard, or maybe his maternal grandfather, a golden tan, he can tan in winter without a lot of trouble. But he’s got that stubborn look in his eye, and his mouth is twisted in a way familiar to her from foggy bathrooms and Russian propaganda. 

 

“Again,” she says, and Anthony falls. 

 

“Again,” she says a second time, and Anton  _ rises _ . 

 

She teaches him all the things her own mother, in a twisted sort of way, taught her. They don't demonstrate quite the same way, but the next kidnapper better be prepared to have their neck broken. 

 

“I was born,” Maryia pants into the space between them, hot from adrenaline, face flushed, hearts fast, “I was born to a mother that did not love me, did not care until I was old enough to be trained. You understand that, Anton? I grew up in a cold place, my father was called Ivan and my mother was just that. You understand, Anthony?”

 

“Yes,” he whispered, terrible certainty in his heart, he has heard his father and his...friends talk. Call the Soviets Ivan and heard them refer to the motherland with jeers.“Yes.”

 

“Do not tell anyone about my mother, Anton,” Mariya whispers.

 

“Yes,” Anthony, Anton says. 

 

She teaches him even more, how to speak eight languages, Russian, English, Latin, Chinese, German, Italian, Japanese, French,  and a little morse code. As he gets older, he will only reveal four. SHIELD doesn't need to be connecting dots. 

 

She tells him how to deflect, how to hide, how to become something else with a smile and a flick of his fingers. It works remarkably well if you stick to it, she tells him. Live in the skin so you don't have to put it on. 

She teach him how to smile for the press, wide and bright as a thousand light bulbs. How to smile for the people that want something for him, like a shark that smells blood in the water. One for the ones that think they're tricking him, at first simple and deceptive, then sharp, cutting, the embodiment of  _ oh honey, don't you try that on me. _

 

She tells him how to create chaos, how to hide behind your own face, how to become someone so outrageous you don't even need a diversion, you are it. 

 

How to turn charm on and off like a faucet, how to convey anything with a twitch of your facial expression, sugary sweetness or hatred or innocence. She regrets the last one, he uses it far too often when he’s caught doing something he shouldn't. 

 

She teaches him what to say, what to do to become someone you’re not. She teaches him what things to take up, what kind of people others overlook, ignore, roll their eyes and say,  _ he’s harmless, don’t worry. _

 

The playboy-genius-billionaire-philanthropist is created, forged crossed-legged on the wooden floor of a dusty gym. It will be a while until he is used, until it becomes him and he becomes it. 

 

Tony can wait. 

 


	10. names

 

When father is away, матушка will take over the kitchen, send even Jarvis away, and lock the doors,  just her and Anthony.

 

She would heave a big, handwritten cookbook onto the counter, tell him about all the recipes, and all the memories that come along with it .  About how on special occasions they used to eat Perigo and stew and she would  be allowed a sip of red wine from Madame’s glass, although she never tells him exactly who Madame is .

 

She’d dice and slice and without even looking, a whole pile of vegetables would  be chopped in a heap on the cutting board .

 

They would spend the entire afternoon in there, cooking first then finally unlocking the doors and letting a frazzled Jarvis, cries of _ ‘what on earth have you too been doing in here _ _?! You’re going to give me a heart attack! Drive me to insanity!’  _ accompanying him.

 

He wasn't as concerned as soon as stuffing his face in their cosy little cottage on the edge of the grounds next to Ana and  _ Матушка; _  rather than the large, impersonal dining room of the manor .

 

He grew up in those snapshots, one moment he was a babe, toddling around the shiny linoleum floors, the next he was a grinning five-year-old, then seven and eight and nine and ten then Ana’s dead and it’s okay,  really , it is, but these sort of gatherings aren't  really the same anymore .

 

He leaves for MIT at 14, and they sort of stop, a little. He does them, when he’s home on break; but, he’s not on break that often.

 

He graduates at 17, Jarvis dies at 18, and he moves to California. Neverless to say, they aren’t an event anymore.

 

Then, his parents are dead, his  _ Матушка  _ is dead, and they’re gone. Forever. He steals her cookbook from where it  was stashed behind a painting.  It's  wonderfully hodge-podge, full of squirrelled away pages ripped from magazines and cookbooks and written down on little pieces of paper .  You can tell it's  been collected from people over the years because sometimes on the hand-written ones there's edits in a different hand .

 

He can’t bear to cook any of the recipes, but sometimes, in the middle of the night when he’s still awake but nobody else is, he flips through the pages, smells the scent still clinging the paper, of spices and warmth and  _ home _ .

 

So, in typical Tony Stark fashion, he tucks them away.  They stay hidden in his workshop for years, inside a fireproof, water-proof, bomb-proof drawer equipped to survive a nuclear blast .

 

After he moves into the Stark-Avengers tower, and after staring at it for too long in the twilight of the night, he gets it out .  It’s never dark in the kitchen, there's always Midtown glow and neon buzz and thousands of lights along with the moon . So, if he tilts the page so light slides along the cluttered paper, he can read it almost as clear as day.

 

So he does, flips through each page and scrutinises each smudged ‘a’ or messy ‘u’. Some of the pages  are stained , or smudged, or written in Russian or Chinese or…. Is that Greek?

 

Still, he pours over it, every fingerprint pressed into the sauce stain at the edge of the page, a little blue-ink doodle scrawled in the margins, his mother's loopy handwriting, writing little notes on the recipes . He can  nearly recite some pages from memory by the time he's 30, but he still does it.

 

At the very end, on the edge of the frayed cover, hidden behind a loose piece of paper, is his mother's name.

 

_ Maryia Chernov. _

 

Just a little name, scrawled in small print with jagged, Russian edges that shows her hand is not used to writing in English yet .

 

Maria Carbonell.

 

Maria Stark.

 

Maria Chernov.

 

Mama.

 

_ Матушка _ .

 

She had many names. The world knows her for a few, not all. He’s sure there's more, somewhere, whether it be from missions or friendships or people she’s killed.

  
The world has forgotten her, but then again — it never  really knew her.


	11. любить

“Hey, Rhodes,” he greets  easily , the car starting under him. Vibrations from the engine rattle up his legs in a comforting manner.  He leans back on the leather seat, watches out the window as the car pulls away from the private airport. There's no evidence of his flight on the logs, enough money will make sure of that.

 

_ “Tony? Where are you? You missed a meeting, or three.” _

 

“Oh, how frazzled does the PA look?”

 

_ “...very.” _

 

“Tell her I’m sorry.”

 

_ “Where should I send your condolences?” _

 

“Russia.”

 

_ “Russia?! What are you doing in Russia?” _

 

“Uh...Tracking down some family history.”

 

_ “You’re Russian?” _

 

“Well, don't say it so loud, the brass'll hear,” he smirks, even though Rhodey can’t see it.

 

_ “Ton—” _

 

“Bye, honey-bear,” he says, hanging up. He sighs, looks out the window.  They're passing through some little town, and it makes Tony homesick for something that was never his home .

 

“An hour to Moscow, sir,” the driver tells him.

 

“Thanks.”

* * *

 

His Mama is dead, and he stands in the snow, city around him.

 

This wasn't her home, he knows. She didn't  really have a home, at least not for the Russian part of her life. But, still. He knows she lived here, for a while.

 

Even if this wasn't her home, even if nowhere  really was — not even Stark manor, he doesn't think. It was always too big on her, on everyone,  really — but he likes the thought of this.  So, here he is, standing in the snow, hands in pockets, cheeks ruddy, facing the golden light from the stores as people stream around him on the sidewalk .

 

“Bye,  _ матушка _ ,” he whispers, watching an unwilling little girl tugged along by her mother.

 

The hotel is  perfectly accommodating, of course. They don't even ask him what Tony Stark is doing in Russia, especially right after his parent’s death.  Well, except from one bellboy, but Tony  just grins, ruffles his hair, and says,  _ “top secret stuff, Kid” _ — even though the ‘kid’ is only a year or so younger, but so,  _ so _ much more innocent —  _ “when you’re older, I’ll tell you _ _.” _

 

What he didn't tell the busboy is: he’s living as a tourist, going to museums and archives and everything he can find about the Soviet Union .  Maybe it's more of a historium thing, then.

 

Rhodey is keeping the military off his back as he does, citing grief. And also misleading the press. They think he's locked himself inside the manor and is drinking himself to death.

 

Finally, finally, he finds Madame B.

 

She is dead, for all intents and purposes. She went dark in the fall of the USSR, she should be dead. Many are.  But no one  truly knows what happened to operatives, there's a  maybe a full three days where anyone could make their escape . That's more than anyone needs. 

 

He finds evidence of the Red Room, of the widows.

 

His mother was one of the only ones left, especially circa 1991, although, that didn't last long.

 

There’s three that he can track down, Misha Ivanov, in Paris, working for the government. Yana Petrov, in Norway, who hides when she sees him. The last, Natalia Romanova, who is living in Budapest, they fight in a stairway before she gets away. He lets her go, lets  all of them go. They are relics,  just trying to survive in a world they were not raised to live in.

 

He feels sorry, then scorns himself for his own pity. They do not want it.

 

He has to throw the paparazzi off his scent, so off he goes, to some nightclub that he doesn't  really care about. Soon enough, after fighting off a gaggle of simpering girls and sliding into a booth in the corner. People gather in clumps whispering, staring, pointing fingers. None dare to approach.

 

She walks up to him, further than the others, not scared in the slightest.

 

“Anastasia,” she introduces, accent thick on her words, clogging every syllable.  He doesn't care that she’s  probably manipulating him, looking for something — money, fame,  just the sheer bragging rights . He’s looking for something, too.

 

“Tony,” he says back, smiles, reaches a hand for her to shake.

 

They are...well, not  _ together,  _ but, something close, for three months. It’s fun,  really it is. He ends up picking up some Russian, it's easy to relearn the lessons of his childhood, more than a few traditions, and feels more connected to his heritage than he ever has.  She teaches him many things like,  _ Nostrovia _ to toast a drink and the perfect way to cook pierogi, and although he loves his mother, more than anything, he’s got to admit, they’re  really ,  _ really _ good .

 

She teaches him to dance the traditional Russian way, how to eat and walk and drink and sing the Russian way, and he slips into a different version of himself . His name is still Tony, but he is more Anton than he has felt in a long time.

 

She calls him a stupid америкосы, and laughs when he pronounces things wrong, laughs when he’s drunk and staggering across the floor to dance with her, laughs and laughs and  _ laughs _ — oh, he could get lost in that sound forever . It’s not  partially charming, it doesn't sound like bells or the songs of faeries, but it’s  _ real _ . People aren't real with him anymore. He realises he missed it.

 

They don’t have the sort of relationship he’s used to, they don’t go out and drink all night, they don't party and party until his ears are ringing and  _ woah _ , he’s pretty sure that drink  was spiked —

 

Instead, they  just ...sit. In the lounge of his hotel room, in her flat.  Sometimes they read, something Tony doodles plans for SI, sometimes Anastasia fixes up her things, holes in her skirt, rips in her stocking, and Tony marvels at how her fingers move, so  wonderfully quick .  The thread pulling taunt, the needle shining in the golden light from the lamp, the whole thing coming together like some beautiful, intricate piece of machinery, he falls  just a little bit in love with her hands .  Just her hands, though. Nothing else, of course.

 

Sure, they have sex — do you know who you’re talking to? — but it’s usually gentle, slow, rocking. Lazy in the morning, quiet at night not to wake her room-mate. He finds he enjoys it more than the wild, frenzied, fucking like bunnies version he usually does at home.

 

He likes it.

 

He likes  _ her _ .

 

The thought doesn't shock him.

 

Soon, his visa is  nearly up and Russian officials are banging at his door. It's not like he’s about to tell them his mother was a Russian to get citizenship or something  just for a girl.

 

So, he leaves. He doesn't tell her, the coward he is. He can’t bear to.

 

Instead, he  just tries to imprint him on her a little more  deeply , kiss not harder, but stronger, fuck, not wilder, but deeper .  He closes his eyes the next time she laughs, savours the sound like it's a four-course meal at a Michelin restaurant that costs four hundred dollars . He gives her a ring, not in the typical sense. No, it isn't on her left hand, second from the end.  It's on her index, small and simple silver with a round stone of some fancy jewel he can't  be bothered remember the name to studded in the middle .

 

He leaves her flat for the last time late at night, listens to her yell  _ пошлость!  _ then yells a goodbye back.  He hears the door swing shut, her footsteps creak across the old floorboards if he tries and then — this he is imagining, he is sure — the pull of the fridge door open, the rustle of her hands looking for ramen, the hiss of the kettle, the tear of the packet .

 

He mouths goodbye at the window and tries not to feel sick.

 

A week later, he is back to full Tony Stark, any trace of Anton gone, with two blonde girls on his arm and a drink in his hand, he smiles for the flashes of photographs and hopes they don't make it to Russia .

  
He  really did like her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title is russian for love


	12. king atlantis

 

He meets Ty in Monaco, who honks at him first, Tony honks back, then they’re both trying to out-race each other down the Formula 1 track, people shout at them and Tony hears the blip of police sirens, but all he can feel is the wind in his hair and adrenaline .

 

When they finally get pulled over, they're both windswept and grinning. Ty gets out of his car, jogs past the policeman, and gives Tony a high-five.

 

His cheeks are pink, and his blonde hair  is ruffled beyond belief. “Hi,” he says, “I’m Ty.”

 

“Tony,” he grins back.

 

This feels like something new.

* * *

 

Ty pulls him into the club scene, it’s almost like submerging into a different, alien, world. He dips his head under into Atlantis, tries to pretend he doesn't need air.

 

It’s almost peaceful, even with the lights and music pounding a hole in his head, he can almost...drift. Float on his back and stare at the sky. He's not scared of drowning. 

 

The papers notice, of course, talk about how his parents must be rolling in their graves, about the billionaire-genius-playboy, the rich boy gone wild .

 

He never  really cared what his father thought, of course, but his mother...he does wonder if she would approve. She taught him how, after all, but…

 

He doesn't know anymore.

* * *

 

The drugs help him ignore, is all. So does the drinks. Better to ignore than remember, have something slip out in front of the brass.

 

He’s at some rave in New York, and Ty pushes him into a corner and kisses him, long and full and  deeply .

 

He kisses him back, without even the slightest silver of hesitation. Even though Obie would have a riot and the press a field day and the people a laugh.

 

Ty pulls back, his lips are pink and his eyes  are buried under black eyeliner, he snickers a laugh, “Tony, baby, I’ve been waitin’ a long time to do that .”

 

“Have you now?” Tony pretty much purrs, leans in.

 

Ty kisses him again as an answer, sharp and sweet, before drawing back.

 

“We’re gonna rock this thing,” he whispers into the curve between their bodies, wet and sweet and out of breath.

 

“What thing?”  Tony murmurs, ignoring the bass pounding and the sweaty bodies jostling  just beyond their safe little corner .

 

Ty shrugs, “the world.”

 

“Didn’t we both already know that, though?” Tony whispers, and this, right here, it feels like a rebirthing, like an — an awakening.  It feels like the world after apocalypse, destroyed and burnt but hopeful,  just a shadow of civilisation left but that's enough .

* * *

 

Tony puts out invention after invention at SI, not  just weapons, but things to help people, not kill them. Ty stands by his side, orders pizza and sits in the corner of the lab, tapping away on an old typewriter.

 

Tony asks.

 

Ty laughs, takes another swig of his whiskey with a splash of coffee, and says, “I’m the torchured-soul genius-writer, don’t you know ? Party boy, bachelor,  secretly gay, rich, daddy issues. I got it all, baby,” he drawls.

 

Tony laughs, it’s so like Ty, down to his DNA, to play this role, to wear it like a crown, like it's an honorific.

 

“ Just don’t sell us to the press,” he jokes.

 

“I’d make a pretty buck,” Ty says, bats his eyelashes.

 

“Oh, you sure would,” Tony answers, grinning down at him sitting cross-legged on the floor. “But  I think you’d get a better deal with me, sugar-pie.”

 

Ty laughs, taps a few keys, almost  aimlessly . “Yeah,” he says, “I guess I would.”

* * *

 

 

They have a slice of something like domesticity, as well.  After a party when they’re waking up at one in the afternoon, yawning, bones cracking and joints popping in a sleepy haze .

 

They shuffle toward the kitchen, where Tony presses the button for the coffee and Ty starts the toast. Tony drops a peck onto Ty’s cheek, holding a steaming cup.

 

They eat breakfast together and discuss schedules and _hey you wanna tag along to San Fran with me? Nah, sorry, I’m in Paris. Huh, well you’re free for Berlin, right?_

  
Tony thinks this might be the first time he's  truly happy for what feels like a millennia.


	13. 29

  
  


They break up fall of 1998, and Tony’s never felt that way before, never will again, because Ty? Ty was everything. And even if they couldn't do anything in public, it was all he needed, all he wanted.

 

And now it's gone.

 

After it happens, after they screamed and yelled and gestured  loudly and it’s over, Tony stumbles down to the club pounding bass down the street. He falls into the music and that blonde girl’s smile and  _ wow _ , she has blue eyes  just like Ty’s and then they’re staggering through a door and she pushes him down on the bed, straddling him . He kisses her harder, tries to forget.

 

He gets lost in it for a while, lost in the fucking and drinking and soon enough he doesn't think twice before snorting cocaine off the asscrack of a supermodel . Ty’s doing the same thing, he knows, and so he takes to sticking near New York with Ty in California.

 

He can't even remember why or who, anymore. His mind has erased any trace of that Friday night they broke up.

 

He’s sober for once, even though his fingers are itching. The world feels odd without anything to dull it, it’s grating, harsh, sharp, without that protective layer. Is this what being a genuis feels like? Is this what being a person feels like?

 

“Sir,” JARVIS interrupts, “I have some news you might want to hear.”

 

“Hit me with it, J,” he drawls, pushing those thoughts away as hard as he can.  _ That's what you do best,  _ a little voice taunts.

 

A new article spins into the air, flickering a little. The holo system is new, after all, he’s still working out the kinks.

 

**_SON OF PROPTERY MOGUL DIES AT 29. APPARENT COCAINE O.D._ **

 

There's a picture of Ty, one that  maybe he took, and he looks so goddamn  _ happy _ , smiling at the camera, at him,  widely ,  truly . He knows it's a perfect picture, because I didn't smile like that in real life.  He smirked and laughed and winked but never  _ that _ smile, the one that showed his one chipped tooth and the dimples in his cheeks . The one that showed his imperfections.

 

When he said hit him with it, this isn't what he meant. He feels like he's  been socked in the gut

 

His phone rings, it’s Sunset. He answers it with shaking hands.

 

“H — Hi,” he stammers, holding a hand to his chest.

 

“Tony? You still on for tonight?”

 

“Um, I — I don’t know,” he looks up, eyes locked on ‘cocaine’ and ‘overdose’.

 

“Are you alright?”

 

“I — I, no,  I think I’m not,” he manages then hangs up

 

He spends all night in the penthouse, and when his new assistant, Virginia turns up, he’s red-eyed, drunk and  maybe drooling a little .

 

“Mr. Stark?” She asks, approaching him like a frightened kitten, “what’s wrong?”

 

“Ty,” he chokes, “— Ty died. I didn't — I didn't say, say goodbye. I didn't say  _ anything _ .”

 

Virginia  just puts him in bed, leaves a bowl for him to puke in later, tucks the sheets around his torso.

 

He grabs hold of her arm  just before she leaves, fingers clenching in an iron grip, “Don’t — don’t leave, Ty,” he asks  desperately , seeing someone else’s face . “I’m sorry — I shouldn't have left. I thought we were gonna be forever.”

 

“Tony,” Virginia says, fighting the waver in her voice, “Tony, let go of me.”

 

“Now….now I can move back to California,” he murmurs, and his head lolls back, eyes going glassy. His grip grows tired, and Virginia can pull her wrist free.

 

“Night, Tony,” she murmurs, still shaken.

 

The next morning he appears, tired bags under his eyes, to the kitchen like nothing ever happened.

 

“Hey, Virginia. You need to get a new name, because I've  nearly called you ‘virgin’ at least three times now. Tell me, any embarrassing high school nicknames?”

 

Virginia smiles, brushes her hair back from her face and says, “Pepper.”

 

He sees the bruises around her wrist and frowns, “okay, Pepper, what happened to your wrist?”

 

“Oh,  just — a mugger. No big deal, I got my stuff back.”

 

Tony  just hums and looks up at her over the rim of his mug.

 

“Going out tonight?” she tries.

 

“No, um,” he clears his throat, “not doing that anymore.”

 

“Oh,” she stops short. “Oh.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Do you...do you want, like, rehab?” she ventures. She knows about his...adventures, with drugs — half of New York does.

 

He smirks at her. “I’ll be fine.  Just lock myself in the workshop for a while.”

 

“Okay,” she swallows, ignores the fact that  _ that’s not the healthiest way to deal with it  _ and says instead, “you have a meeting at one, then to meet with R&D at three and need to go over the proposals for the Canada expansion sometime today .”

 

“Ditch the meeting, move R&D to one— five, and I’ll do the Mountie thing tonight.”

 

“No, do  all of them at the proposed times,” she fights back, voice icy.

 

He smiles, “alright, Pep,  just seeing if I could get away with it.”

 

“You can’t. Oh, and, Sunset Bain has been calling you nonstop. I haven't been picking up, do you want me to?”

 

His eyes go dark. “No, send the next call to me. I’ll handle it.”

 

He turns towards his office, but she stops him. “Did you hear about that Tiberius guy in California? Don't you know him?” her words are careful, walking on ice without skates.

 

He lies perfectly, she notices, without even blinking. “Yeah, I did. He was...well, I'm not surprised how he died.”

 

She doesn't say anything else, lets him leave.

 

If she picks up on the fact that they  maybe weren't  just friends, she doesn't mention it.

 

He's grateful. 


	14. the middle

 

Over the years, he...well, not  _ forgets _ . He… ignores yes, that's the right word. He ignores.

 

He knows everything, can recall it in a second if he needs (he never does) but ignores. Pushes it down when it rises from the depths of his mind like some  ghostly phantom.

 

When the generals talk about communism and Russia, and only smiles and pretends to be the dumb son they all think he is . Like he's stumbles onto SI, like it grew from a million-dollar company to a billion by mistake.

 

People see what they wanna see, and they wanna see the crazy, offensive drunk playboy with the dead daddy and the pretty, socialite mother in the grave too . He doesn't change what helps him. And that, that helps him more than anything. It's easy to manipulate when people underestimate you.

 

He stumbles through his life like it’s a video game, without care or rules, like life gone wild. 

 

He builds a gym, and sometimes, when he can't sleep, that's what he does. He trains, he practices, whatever you want to call it he comes out in the morning with bruised knuckles and the corpse of a training dummy to dispose of. 

 

The year 2000 comes, and he’s in Bern. It’s a shame it’s not anywhere more symbolic, Russia or Stark Manor or  maybe even Italy, not  just Switzerland.  It's been nine years since his mother died, and the ache is still deep in his heart, hurts every time he pulls it up like an anchor in a river .

 

Sometimes he does, in a dark room, him and his thoughts and the wash of the night like a gentle tide. It's peaceful there, he can see  everyone he's ever loved. Mama, Ana and Edwin, Ty.

 

It's sad, he supposes, his life. It's worth nothing, even if he has everything. He also supposes it's a comfort, too. Ignorance is bliss, and although he’s maybe the smartest person of the century, he is blissful. 

 

The years go by, he marvels how easy it is to get lost in Tony Stark. Sometimes he  barely even remembers Anton, the days he spent as him.

 

He knows. He can recall every second at a moment's notice. He only chooses not to. No need to bring back anything unneeded, like his mother or Anastasia or — or  _ anything _ .

 

Then, then he is in a  _ cave _ with a  _ hole _ in his  _ chest _ , and he wonders if this was what she was preparing him for.

 

Yinsen asks him if he has any family and he almost — almost tells him about his mother, says  _ ‘not anymore but,’ _ but then he remembers who he is and who his mother was and that there are cameras .

 

So he doesn't.

 

Yinsen is dead and the Iron-Man armour is weighing him down, heavy, heavy, like a casket, like a coffin. He wonders if his mama would be proud.

 

He whispers a thousand prayers, half in Russian, half in English, some  just gibberish.  All of them  _ thank _ .  Thank his mother and the fact that the last thing that he will ever see will be blue sky and sand, not the inside of a dirty, horrible cave .

 

Then he can hear helicopter blades and  suddenly he is on his knees and Rhodey —  _ oh _ , Rhodey is there.

 

He stumbles inside the military copter transporting him back to base, and he’s delirious and drunk on _ I’m alive I’m alive, oh my god, I’m alive _ as so is Rhodey so they’re both laughing and laughing, even if it hurts his chest, he’s still laughing .

 

Now that he's started, he doesn't know if he'll ever stop.


	15. Chapter 15

“What are we having?” Tony asks, sliding into his seat. The covered dishes on top of the table are steaming  lightly , and smell hearty and delicious.

 

“Russian,” Steve yells from the kitchen behind him. They’ve been trying the cuisines of the world lately, Tony likes it. This is the first time they've done Russian, and he's  entirely unprepared.  If he closes his eyes he can imagine Mari(y)a, back turned, quick hands flying over the kitchen counter, stirring that, dicing this, adding things and taking away others .

 

Tony snaps himself out of it, those days are over now. He raises his eyebrows, turning to Natasha, “your idea?”

 

She shrugs, taking a long sip out of her wine glass. “Not  really . Still, it’s nice.”

 

Steve and Bruce arrive, sitting down in their chairs. “Okay, let’s eat,” Bruce says, unveiling the first dish, a steaming bowl of Borscht.  Pelmeni is also revealed, along with a rich Zharkoe stew, Olivie potato salad, and, of course Pierogi .

 

“Thank you,  _ Россия _ ,” Tony murmurs under his breath, “you may be a total shithole  in terms of human rights, but your comfort food is top fucking notch .”

 

Tony takes a bite of the pierogi, “Oh, my god,” he moans, outloud this time. “This is brilliant.” It’s  _ just _ like his mother used to make it.

 

“It should be, it’s your recipe,” Bruce jokes, across the table. It  _ is _ his mother's, guess his tastebuds aren't all dead after all.

 

Tony chokes, “what?"

 

“We found it, way back in the cupboard,” Steve says, “looks handwritten, too.”

 

“Oh, uh, yeah. That.”

 

“Where'd you get it?” Steve asks, eating a forkful of Olivie.

 

_ My mother, she was a Russian spy, Natasha, you might know her?  _ Tony doesn't says, instead, “ just a girl,  I think . She was on a few days layover, left it behind.

 

“Weird thing to leave behind,” Bruce says, mouth stuffed full.

 

Tony only hums, tries not to let the panic show on his face.

 

“You guys want a drink?”  Clint asks at  just the right time, Natasha has that look on her face again, the one that says,  _ ‘I will find out’ _ that he recognises from his palladium days . “Vodka? In de spirit of de mutherland?” he puts on a heavy Russian accent for the last bit and Tony snorts, it's  phenomenally bad.

 

“Yes, please,” Tony yells as Clint turns out of the room towards the liquor cabinet. .

 

“I thought scotch was your thing,” Bruce says mildly, heaping a forkfull.

 

Tony shrugs, “the first time I got drunk was with vodka, forgive me, but I’m sentimental.”

 

It was, he was fifteen and at MIT, he passed the cheap beer at a frat party, and went for the bottle of liquor somebody was passing around . Figured if he'd break the law, he'd do it in Russian fashion.

 

Clint comes back, carrying a large bottle of vodka and some shot glasses without dropping anything, a miraculous feat in itself .

 

The conversation switches back to easy chatter, something Tony is grateful for.

 

“ _ Nostrovia _ ,” he toasts after Clint hands him a shot, lifting his drink. Natasha raises her drink alongside his, eyebrows raised in question.

 

“ _ Nostrovia _ ,” she echoes, then throws back her head, drinking the vodka like water. Tony does the same, and winks at her after. 

 

She squints at him. 


	16. unless you're the bad guy

 

They’re on a mission in Russia, and Tony  _ knows  _ before they even land that this has something to do with the old Soviet government, circa 1922. 

 

They land in an empty warehouse where everything echoes. 

 

“Alright team,” Cap says into the coms, “spread out,and let’s do this.”

 

“Roger that,” Tony says, and activates his repulsors gently, flying over to a hallway leading to some offices. 

 

It’s mostly quiet, until he hears a scuffle behind him. He whirls around, but whatever caused it is already gone. 

 

“Hello?” he calls, “I’m not going to hurt you. Well, unless you’re the bad guy, then, yeah, I’m gonna hurt you.”

 

He floats towards a corner gently, JARVIS picking up on a heat signature. 

 

“Hello?” he calls again. 

 

It’s a little girl, pale, with dirty blonde hair past her shoulders. She’s shivering, they’re south of Moscow and it’s bitterly cold. 

 

“Oh,” he sighs, but doesn’t let up scrutiny. He knows  _ all _ about little girls who can still fight, even when they look deceptively innocent — they are trained that way. He turns on his com, “Guys —” 

 

He's met with a bunch of garbled static. Signal blocker. 

 

“Oh no,” he gasps, eyes fixed on the little girl, now smiling.

 

Without a missing a beat, he turns and flies down the way he came, around a hallway, coming out in the large, open space of the warehouse. 

 

There, everyone is fighting with what looks like highly trained operatives. 

 

They’d left Bruce behind, the US already has fragile relations with Russia, and they don't need to make it worse with the rampage from the giant green rage monster. 

 

Luckily, they still have Thor, Cap and him, the hard-hitters. 

 

The fight is quick-paced, Tony can barely see anything past his shock and the shine of Steve’s shield catching on the watery sun. He does, and dives forward into the fight. 

 

Once it’s done, and the men are bound on the floor, Tony floats forward.

 

“Why are you here?” Tony demands, replusers whining in warning. Nobody answers.  _ “Why are you here?”  _ he demands a second time, voice harder. 

 

“Your mother,” one spits and Tony blows his head off.

 

“What ‘tis this about your mother?” Thor booms, flying down beside him. 

 

“Nothing, Thor,” Tony murmurs, eyes still fixed on the splattered body. “Nothing about my mother.”

 

While Tony had been interrogating the henchmen, Cap had followed Natasha, who had been notably absent from the fight. 

 

They come back by someone shattering a window overlooking the ground floor of the warehouse, you can only see Natasha’s red hair falling to the floor along with someone’s grey, then Cap’s face peeking out from the window. 

 

Natasha and the other tussle on the ground while the others run to help. Tony is rooted to the floor, eyes fixed on the woman. 

 

Is that…?

 

No. 

 

She’s got to be dead by now. She’d have to be ninety, and if she was even still breathing, she couldn't fall out of a  _ window _ then fight a Widow, no matter if she trained them. Unless, super-soldier serum? Or some weakened form of it?

 

“Tony!” Cap yells, now on the ground, restraining Madame. 

 

He snaps out of it, flying forward, repulsor in her face. 

 

The other henchmen don't dare to move with Thor hovering over them. 

 

An unmarked van screeches up, Maria Hill and a number of other agents climbing out. 

 

“You,” Madame hisses, eyes on his fac plate. . “You!”

 

Natasha glances around at him. 

 

Cap looks confused. “Did you do something to her?” he yells, even as she’s spititng Russian expletives at him. 

 

“Uh, probably,” Tony says, “or my...father did,”  _ not the right parent.  _ “You know, we’re in Russia, Cold War, weapons.”

 

“You thief!” she yells, “you took her! You took her!”

 

“Who did you take?” Steve asks, letting SHIELD zap her with some sort of taser that makes her pass out.

 

“Oh,” he waves a hand, “family, friends, loved ones. You know. The usual.”

 

Steve frowns but turns away. 

 

“Maria!” he calls, she’s in tac gear, walking with two soldiers dragging Madame. She turns, putting away her radio after finishing transmissions. 

 

“Yeah?” she asks. 

 

“Can I interrogate her?” When he sees Maria’s raised eyebrow he reiterates, “or well, at least talk.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I — uh, just need to.”

 

“I need a reason for SHIELD, Tony.”

 

“Well, you know, she was talking about SI before 2008, back when it was making weapons, unresolved guilt, you know.”

 

Her face goes sympathetic, “sure, Tony,” she agrees easily. “Maybe after we’re done with her.”

 

She starts to turn away and Tony shouts, “wait!”

 

“What's wrong?”

 

“Uh, there's a — a girl. Upstairs, that way,” he points. “A… widow, I think.”

 

“Okay, thank you,” Maria nods, then says something into her radio that directs a gaggle of soldiers thundering past them. 

 

“No, you shouldn't just send them,” Tony says, “I can —’

 

“SHIELD will handle it,” Maria tells him, hand on his chest. “Don’t worry.”

 

“I —” Tony says, but she’s gone and so is Madame. 

 

He watches the van pull away, roll out for the warehouse. Emotion bloom in his chest like an explosion, twisting and bulging into the air like some twisted version of creation. 


	17. legacy?

 

“Mariya Chernov,” Natasha says. 

 

Tony freezes, every line of his body going tight and tense. “How do you know that?” he demands. They’re in the tower, in his personal floor. JARVIS would have notified him if she came in, but he didn't. She’s sitting on the couch like she belongs there, holding a glass of wine, tilting it so red swirls inside.

 

“I did some research after that team dinner, and the Russia incident,” she says, methodically, logically, carefully. “Turns out, you are related to one of the Red Room’s greatest spies,” she says it smiling, like a child who has discovered an Easter egg. 

 

“Stop it,” he snarls, lowly, quietly, a quiet kind of threat, no less dangerous.

 

“Your mother was a legend, top of her class, the top of  _ any  _ class, for years. But... she was a warning also; a betrayer.”

 

“Don't call her that,” he hisses.

 

“What?” Natasha blinks, on the edge of innocence, bringing the wine to her red mouth, “a legend?”

 

“ _ Maria Stark _ was my mother, not Mariya Chernov.” 

 

“You should be proud,” she hisses, setting down the glass with a clink. “Your mother  _ was _ a legend, she helped me defect.”

 

“And when she did, we both nearly  _ died _ .”

 

“Everyone nearly dies, Tony. But, you didn’t, you're still here. Your mother made sure of it, I’m positive.”

 

“Do you know how hard it is?” he asks, almost-collapsing onto the couch, “to have one parent, a Russian, the other the largest suppliers of weapons to the _A_ _ merican _ side of the Cold War? I've never told  _ anyone _ about my mother, not Ty, not Pepper, not Howard, not Obie. No one. You expect me to be okay with you suddenly exposing us?”

 

“No,” she sneers, face tilted into his, “but I expected better of the son of a  _ Widow _ .”

 

“You think she did to me the things Madame did to you?” Natasha jerks aback, surprised in his knowledge. “Yes,” Tony hisses, “I know about Madame, I know about the Red Room, about the things that  _ матушка _ wouldn't tell me.”

 

“You call her  _ матушка _ , but you are not Russian,” she spits, “you are a shame. _A_ _ мерикосы _ .” 

 

“Calling me an American?” Tony scoffs, laughing in the face of her anger, “original.”

 

She snarls, “I understand secrets, of course I do, but I do not understand you, Tony Stark. Why are you so scared?”

 

“I found out about her past when she killed four people that had been sent to kill me  _ and _ her. Forgive me if I want to keep it quiet.”

 

“They cannot hurt you, you know,” she says quietly, her rage gone. “You are Tony Stark, now.”

 

“But I am no longer Aton,” he shrugs, “a price I pay.”

 

"if you could change one thing," Tony says, "one thing about that place."

 

"id burn it," she says lowly, "I'd burn it and know that no more girls will live there and die there again. What happened to my sisters.." she trails off. "it will never happen again. It can't.

 

He gets up to leave, Natasha watches him, says nothing. 

 

“You know,” he pauses in the doorway, “I  _ was _ Russian, once. A bit after my mother died, I lived in Moscow for three months, had a girl and everything.”

 

“You have a girl everywhere, don't you?” Natasha teases, takes the words as the olive branch it is, returns them in full. 

 

“Yeah,” he says softly, “not like Ana, though. No one’s ever really come close.”

 

“Not even Pepper?”

 

“Not in the same way.”

 

There is silence. 

 

She gets up. Drains her wine glass. 

 

“Goodbye,” Natasha says. 

 

“ _ Прощай _ ,” Tony says, and the quirk of his mouth smiles. 

 

This is not going in her report; she’s not too sure how much actually is. 


	18. liar, liar. лжец, лжец.

  
  


“Hello, Madame,” he says coldly, standing inside the interrogation room, hand in pockets. He does not know what SHIELD knows, so he has to be careful when it comes to what he says. 

 

“Stark.”  She looks at him like he’s nothing, like he’s just a little bug on the bottom of her shoe. He hasn’t been small for a long time, not mentally, spiritually or ideologically, anyway. 

 

He ignores it, pressing on. “What have you been doing since 1991?”

 

She glowers at him, “I could have killed you  _ so many times,  _ but I did not, out of respect to your mother. I am beginning to regret that.” Well, cat’s out of the bag. But he doubts Fury didn’t already know. 

 

“No. You _ think  _ you could have killed me. In reality, you’re just a bitter old woman without power, and you can't accept that.”

 

She snarls at him, wordlessly. 

 

"Calm down, now," Tony soothes. "We gotta talk."

 

Her eyes go hard and cold, she comes back to herself. 

 

“As good as she was," Madame hisses, like a snake, "she was... swayable. She talked to people. She  _ listened _ to them. Svetlana changed her, I knew it did. I still didn’t stop her. I fault myself.”

  
“For what? Her escaping Russia? If she had stayed, she would be dead, maybe in the USSR, maybe in some other mission working for a foreign government. She escaped. And she was  _ happy.  _ If you loved her like you said you do, you would not be angry, or sad, or fault yourself.”

 

She doesn't look at him. He sighs

 

“I know that you know, Fury,” Tony says, passing Nick on his way out. 

 

“What are you gonna do about it?” Fury calls out. Tony stops in his tracks. Fury’s playing a game, here. He pivots on his heel sharply and smiles a No.2 business shark. He’s going to play back. 

 

“Oh, Nicky. The question is, what are  _ you _ ?”

 

He has a few options. One, pretend this never happened, ignore his parentage and move on. Two, leak it. It would ruin him, maybe, but it also might work in his favor, depends on how he's able to spin it. Three, do it. Play as Nicky's lab rat, but win in the end. 

 

He always wins in the end. He wishes it was a trait from his mother, and otherwise it would be but she married his father and got in the car with him that snowy night in December. 

 

“Look, Nick, I’ll answer any questions — within limits, of course — for one thing in return,” he holds up a finger.

 

“What's that?” he asks, sitting in the metal chair. 

 

Tony leans forward, “this never,  _ ever _ gets out.”

 

Some things are between time and himself.

  
  


* * *

  
  


“How long was she an active agent for Russia, or anywhere else?”

 

“She was only an agent for about four years, and yes, it was for Russia.”

 

“When did she defect?”

 

 “1972.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Me," he splays open his hands, as to say,  _of course, have you met me?_

 

Nick doesn't even blink...or wink. How does that work? “How did you find out?”

 

“Four gunmen broke into the house and tried to kill us, that’s how.”

 

“What happened to them?”

 

A shrug, “mama killed them. I don't know where the bodies went.”

 

“Did she train you?”

 

“Of course,” Tony stares back, not letting anything slip. 

 

“Is she dead?”

 

That makes Tony laugh, “um, what? I’m sure you haven't blacked out 1991 and the following drink-binges.”

 

“Widows can fake their death.”

 

The smile slips off Tony's face. “That was real, Nicky. You don't have to worry about my mother springing out of the woodwork.”

 

There's a moment of silence. Fury fidgets, which is more than strange, Fury is never nervous.    

 

 "Your mother was a good woman, Stark," he says finally. 

 

Tony sighs, heavy, and lean back. He assumes the questions are done for now. "In the end, she was. The start? Not so much."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! sorry for the slightly short slightly weird chapter!


	19. 6 feet

_ “You should see something, sir.” _

 

What, JARV?” Tony asks. 

 

_ “As instructed, I was combing through the SHIELD files released by Ms. Romanoff. I found something interesting.” _

 

“What is it?”

 

_ “...Your mother, sir.” _

 

Tony flicks off his holograms.

 

“What?” 

 

* * *

  
  


“You were the trainer and leader of the Russian program, the ‘Red Room’, correct?” someone asks, an American. 

 

The woman, Madame, says nothing. She stares straight ahead, eyes flinty.

 

“Answer the question,” the man demands, “are you the leader of the Red Room?”

 

She doesn't say anything, just blinks. 

 

There's a sigh, the camera turns off. 

 

When it turns back on, the woman is slumped, not sitting with a ramrod straight back. There is a sheen of sweat on her forehead. 

 

“Your country is not coming for you. You know that. Russia does not care. They are trying to move past your era, not save it. They will cut you loose and let you die.” 

 

The woman looks down. When she looks up, she is defeated. “You think I do not know this? You think I am stupid?”

 

“No, not at all,” the man says evenly. “That’s why you're not dead.”

 

“Ask me something then,” she says, defiance lining every vocal cord. 

 

“What missions would widows usually run?”

 

“Anything the Soviets needed them to. Assassinations, espionage, infiltration. The like.”

 

“So they worked for the USSR”

 

“Yes, you would graduate from the Red Room and then start working for and with Russia and her interests. After, when the USSR fell, many left the sinking ship, as did I, and moved to...other intelligence agencies. Some went here, to SHIELD, other went to China, or Britain, or started doing freelance work, others tried to live a normal life. I'm told it's a... common desire.”

 

“Did you train Natasha Romanoff?”

 

“Her name is Natalia Alianovna Romanova, and yes. I did. She was an exceptional student, but not the best. That’s what's kept her alive.”

 

“How so?”

 

“You know most Widows die, the fall of the Soviet Union didn't help and the best used to get sent on conversion missions to stop people from defecting, but they’d just gain dangerous ideology. That's what happened to Mariya, she was sent to stop Svetlana Alliluyeva. Bad idea. The exceptional run normal missions, they are soldiers, albeit better than normal armies. As the USSR collapsed, more and more missions were sent in more and more dangerous location with less foresight and planning. They panicked and sent my girls to die.”

 

“Is the Red Room still operational?”

 

“No, we finished in any major capacity with the USSR. Since, I’ve done a few small groups, but without resources, it is hard.”

 

“How do you make money off that?”

 

“Sell them on the open market. You'd be surprised how many want a legendary widow on their team.”

 

“We need names.”

 

She laughs, “you know that won't help you. Half the time, they didn't have names, and if they did, they've changed them.”

 

“What kind of skills did you teach?”

 

“Most martial arts, history, language, basic maths and English. It was like a normal classroom, but every girl in there knew how to kill.”

 

“What training techniques did you use?”

 

“Normal things. Training, black-op missions with the KGB. We’d chain them into the beds at night, stop them running away.” she leans forward, “We’d get them to kill each other. Hardens their emotions while refining their skills.”

 

The man does not make any sign of distress. “Who is Mariya Chernov? We know she was a top agent for some time.”

 

“Mariya was a traitor,” the woman spits, “scum. I had such high hopes. She did so well in the training. Too bad she had to fall in love,” she sneers the last words, her disgust evident.

 

“Who did she fall in love with?”

 

Madame shakes her head, “the man we sent her to marry, and her son. We saved her from the sterilization process especially, you know. And then she had to forget.”

 

“You didn’t sterilize her because of this mission?”

 

Madame ignores him. “He took her from me. She was my daughter, or the closest thing to, I helped her, saved her when she let Svetlana Alliluyeva defect. Then she did,” she shakes her head, “I should have seen it coming. I should have stopped her. It’s why we sterilize them. There's nothing more dangerous than a mother.”

 

“What is her name?”

 

Madame smiles. “You call her Maria Stark.”

 

* * *

  
  
  


A sigh, long moment of consideration, then, “bury it, JARVIS. 6 feet under.”

 

Quietly,  _ “Yes, sir.” _

 

He needs to call Fury. 


	20. binary truth

The road is empty. He knows that road. 

 

A silver car skids into frame, smashes into the tree. 

 

He knows that car. 

 

That's the car his mother taught him to drive in. 

 

A motorcycle wheels around, stops next to the smoking car.

 

There wasn't a motorcycle there, Tony knows. The road was empty. His father was drunk. These are facts, carved right into his binary code. They’re one of the few truths in life. The road was empty, his father was drunk. 

 

The road was not empty, he doesn't know if his father was drunk. 

 

A figure gets off the motorcycle. The figure is too blurry to see clearly. He still knows it's Bucky Barnes. 

 

He opens the door, breaks Howard’s neck. 

 

Maria is next. Mariya is next. 

 

“ _ Мужчина _ ?” she says, looking up at him. He’s holding her in the same way she held him, all those years ago, hand around a neck. 

 

He doesn't say anything. 

 

She is scared, truly terrified, for the first time since those men broke into the house, nearly seventeen years ago. 

 

She dies. 

* * *

 

He remembers how he cried that night, full and rough, sobbing harder than his body could hold it, shaking with the force.

 

Before the funeral, when the church was empty and lonely, filled with more ghosts than ever, he lit a candle, left it to flicker on the sideboard, pulled out an old, worn  _ Septuagint _ , printed in Russian, savaged from his mother’s dresser and hidden under everything else. He muttered an  _ panikhida _ , mispronouncing half of the words. After, he sighed, looked down on her exposed face, still beautiful in death, learnt down to kiss a cross engraved on her ornate casket, blew out the candle, and walked away. 

 

His mother wasn't religious. There weren't bibles in the Red Room, after all. Still, he vaguely remembers a church a few times in his childhood, maybe a few references to orthodox, to god. 

 

He remembers after, curled on the bathroom floor, sobbing and sobbing and  _ sobbing _ because she’s gone, his mama, his  _ матушка _ , 

 

All of,  _ that,  _ all of that hurt and pain was a  _ lie.  _ The nights spent curing his father's name for the murder of his mother was for nothing. 

 

Nothing.

 

He looks at Cap, and sees so much more. 

 

Tony knows, Tony knows now that that crash was not to kill Howard, but to kill Maria. 

 

They finally succeeded. A dying effort by the USSR, a successful one, at that. 

 

She died at the same time of her empire, fitting, really. 

 

So now, lying on the ground, a hole in his chest, again, he marvels at the symbolism of it all. Not only of his other time spent in a cold, dark, isolated place, but the fact that he’s about to die where his mother was born.

 

Russia never was kind to the Chernov’s, he supposes, staring at the ceiling, trying valiantly to wiggle his fingers. 

 

 _Life_ never really was kind either. 


	21. the circle ends

  
  
  
  


Once he’s able to stand, He goes to Russia, again. 

 

This time, he’s not looking. In fact, he’s very decidedly against it. He’s finishing. 

 

He goes to a house on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg. He knocks on the door, three times, so he can’t back out.

 

It opens. 

 

She’s standing there her short dark hair long now, spilling over an ear and down her back. Her eyes widen as they set on him. 

 

He smiles. 

 

A child’s laughter dances over from the other room, hand in hand with the sounds of a children’s TV program. 

 

She drops the basket of laundry she’s holding under an arm, stepping over the doorway and shutting the door behind her. 

 

“What are you doing here!” she hisses. Her voice is more thickly accented, and her english rusty. 

 

He shrugs, “finishing what I started.”

 

“No!” she stabs a finger into his chest, “I have seen you on the television, I have seen the news. You do not come in here and disrupt my life!”

 

He holds up his hands in surrender. “No worries, Ana. I’m not here to do that.”

 

“Then why? and’ finishing’ is _not_ an answer!”

 

“I thought you might want closure. I do, so.”

 

Her face softens, a little. “I am sorry for what has happened to you,” she holds up a hand, placing it over his suit, above his heart, above his arc. Her fingers are gentle, and although he tenses when she touches, he does not pull away. “But I got all the closure I needed after you left and never came back,” she says softly, about to pull away. 

 

“I’m sorry about that — I...I don't have an excuse, not one that you’ll want to hear.”

 

“You’re right,” she says. “You don’t.” 

 

He nods, tighten his jaw, “sorry,” is all he says, then turns to where a shiny black car is waiting at the edge of the december-frosted drive. 

 

“Come in anyway,” she interrupts, hand on the doorknob. 

 

He turns back. “Alright.”

 

Her house — the one she shares with her husband, he supposes — is nice. Full of warmth and clutter and the kind of place that makes his heart hurt and head swim with pictures of Ana and Jarvi’s cottage. 

 

“It’s messy, sorry,” she apologises. The pass the entrance to the living room, where a boy with the same curly black hair is sitting in front of the TV, watching some cartoons. 

 

“How old is he?” Tony asks, stopping to watch him. Anastasia pauses as well. 

 

“Ten.”

 

“The father?”

 

She casts a sly glance at him, “not you.”

 

He laughs, and that makes the boy turn.  
  


“Papa!” he cries, then his eyes fall on Tony’s face and his gaze sobers. 

 

“О, извините, сэр. Кто ты?” the questions in a  flurry of rapid Russian. Tony blinks, about to answer when it occurs to him that he’s a stranger standing in his house watching him without his mother in sight. He should probably fix that. 

 

“Annie,” he calls in English, “come over here, so the kid can see you.”

 

“Oh,” she says, walking forward, positioning herself at the doorway. She smiles tightly at the child.

 

“

Привет, я Тони. Я дружу с твоей мамой,” his Russian a is rusty and unused. _Hi, I'm Tony. I'm friends with your mom._

  
  


“Ты выглядишь как Железный Человек.” _you look like iron-man._

 

“ну не говори никому,”  Tony winks, lets his new nano tec crawl over his hand, foam into a gauntlet. _Well, don’t tell anyone._

 

“Artem,” Anastasia swoops in, “Как насчет того, чтобы пойти в свою комнату, а?” _how about going to your room, eh?_

 

He frowns, about to protest when Tony bends down, “делай то, что говорит твоя мама,” _do what your mama says._

 

The kid nods and runs off. 

 

“You're good with kids,” she says. 

 

“I’m good at people,” he says back. “It’s different.”

 

“Is it?”

 

He clicks his tongue, doesn't say anything more. 

 

She sighs, crosses her arms. “What are you here to say?”

 

He leans on the couch, “I want to tell you why.”

 

“Why you left?” she snorts, “I know why. They have newspapers in Russia, you know.”

 

“You weren't just another girl,” he says quietly. “You have to know that.”

 

“It doesn't seem that way,” she says evenly. 

 

“I know,” he admits quietly. “But, there's a lot more to it than a stupid 21-year-old running away.”

 

“It’s been a long time, Tony. I… I don’t know. I have a child, a husband.”

 

“My life isn't the most...simple, either, you know.”

 

She chuckles, “believe me, I know.”

 

“Please, Ana, let me at least _try_ to explain. I’ve been waiting to do this for years.”

 

“Okay,” she relents. 

 

“My mother was Russian. Like, not just genetically.”

 

“Okay,” Ana says, it’s clear she doesn't believe him. 

 

“Really,” he says. “I’m not joking, Annie.”

 

“So it’s this big secret that your father married a Russian.”

 

“He didn't know.”

 

“What? Why?”

 

“Because he was her mission.”

 

She pales, blinks. “Oh.”

 

“Yeah. I was understandably...unsettled when she died. A highly trained operative, dead. I knew there had to be _something_. There wasn't. Or, so I thought.”

 

“What was it?”

 

“Turns out that James Barnes, of one Cap’s old war buddies, had been taken over by HYDRA. He killed her.”

 

“I'm sorry.”

 

“So am I,” he whispers, and feels his heart beat in his chest. 

 

“That's how you knew Russian, I thought it was strange, choosing _that_ language to learn.”

 

He shrugs, “It was a bit suspicious.”

 

“I used to think you were more Russian than American, you know?” she says, softly. “You learnt everything so, so quickly. You fell into Moscow like it is made for you. After you left, I used to walk around street corners and expect to see you there.”

 

“I think I did love you, you know,” he whispers, and it feels like a deathbed confession, almost, but he is putting himself to rest. 

 

She doesn't say anything, for a moment. “I watched you with the rest of the world, you know. I watched you die, I watched you fly. I’ve seen it so many times it’s almost normal now. When that happens, it, it breaks someone. You don’t return from that whole.”

 

“And? Who said I was ever whole?”

 

“Not me, for sure,” she laughs, “but now...I can’t, Tony. I’m sorry.”

 

“I understand. I wasn't really asking, anyway.” He brushes his hands down the lines of his pants, looks towards the door. 

 

“I should have stayed,” he says, and it’s more like a diagnosis than an admission of guilt. 

 

“Maybe you should have,” she agrees, and opens the door. 

 

“See you around, Annie.”

 

“Yeah.”

* * *

“Pepper?”

 

“Yeah?” she asks, curled into his side, holding a perilously full glass of wine. They are at home, Stark Tower. It is late and for once all of the work is done so they are sitting on the couch, bone tired. 

 

“My mother was Russian,” he starts. 

 

* * *

 

“Tony? What are you doing here?!” Rhodey asks, wheeling across the tarmac of a military base somewhere in the Middle East.

 

“Had to come visit by honey-bear, of course.”

 

He gives him a deadeye. “There's more.”

 

“Remember that time I fucked off to Russia for three months?”

* * *

He stands in front of a small house, frail and creaky in the bitter wind.

 

He knocks on the door.

 

It opens, a wrinkled face peering out from under a babushka.

 

“66 лет назад у тебя была дочь,” he starts. _You had a daughter 66 years ago._

 

She pauses, recognises his face. Opens the door. 

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“Don’t wait up, Happy, I’ll meet you back at the hotel,” he says, slamming the door.

 

Happy nods in the side vision mirror and pulls away. 

 

Tony sighs, tugs his beanie low over his face and starts to walk. 

 

6 hours and a few unplanned detours later, he is standing in front of a camouflaged training facility.

 

He finds the door, it's unlocked. Well, more like the wood is rotting and falling apart. 

 

The room is dark, he clicks on his torch. It looks like a reception, there's even a couch in the corner, although it looks like it has a few mice living inside. 

 

He continues, pushes open one of the doors. It shows a dark, ominous hallway. He finds a lightswitch, flips it. There's a faint glow and then a shower of sparks. 

 

He sighs, wields his torch like a sword, and continues. 

 

It’s musty and rotten and there are cobwebs everywhere but when he finally finds where they slept, it’s like they never left. There are ghosts here. 

 

He finds the bed, third row, four along. 

 

There's still a pair of silver handcuffs attached to the bedpost. 

 

He bends down to inspect it, and the floorboards splinter under his feet, he falls, the flashlight clattering out of his hand. 

 

He rolls over, ribs protesting, and yanks his foot out of the hole. 

 

There's a little girl in front of him. 

 

She's wearing ragged clothes, her hair is short, cropped under her ears, and there are dark circles like half-moons under her eyes. 

 

“Hello?” he asks, “Привет?”  _hello?_

 

She tilts her head, turns and skips towards the door. 

 

He hurries to his feet, chasing after her. She leads him through a network of corridors, her giggles echoing back at him. He tries calling out, but he’s left with vocal cords that don’t work. 

 

He’s running now, his pack bouncing in his back, torch swinging his his hand when he burst through a door. 

 

That stops him, takes the air out of his lungs, actually. He collapses on his knees, wheezing. 

 

_It’s the red room._

 

There are matts discarded in a corner, some benches pulled into the corner, _and the walls are red._

 

When he first learnt of it, he imagined bright, cherry red.

 

No. this is — this is blood, this is the color of blood. 

 

Makes sense, in retrospect. 

 

There's a long, high creak behind him, he turns. 

 

It’s the girl, only she’s _growing_. She blinks as her spine shoots up, her hair fluctuates, her limbs grow gangly and awkward, breasts blossom under her shirt, Sunlight flits over her face as she blinks, then darkness and the neon glow of city lights engulf her. 

 

She changes, becoming tan, smiling more. soon her belly bulges and disappears just as fast. She grows older, her hair longer, and now it’s the face he knew for so long. 

 

His mother. 

 

“Mama?” he asks. “Матушка?” 

 

The girl is gone. 

 

He staggers up, out of that terrible room, right where his mother was. He keeps going, thought hat network of dark corridors, bolting like a wild horse. 

 

Soon, he is standing outside in powdery wintery snow, his lungs burning. With shaking hands he tugs his backpack over one shoulder, rifling through it until he finds the flask of gasoline and the lighter. 

 

He splashes a bit around the edges of the structure, then dares to open the door and spill the rest unto the dark carpet. 

 

Then he clicks the lighter on, watches the flame for a moment, then holds it to the carpet, where the wool fibres catch fast. 

 

He goes back outside, arranges for Happy to pick him up in a few hours after he's hiked back down, and watches the red-yellow flames spill out of the door as the fire grows. Thick, oily smoke trickles out of windows, doors, the roof.

 

With a huge crackle, part of the roof collapses, and smoke comes thicker, billowing into the sky, flames lick at the exposed timber, partially rotten but that makes it that much easier to devour. 

 

It is the closest thing to art Tony has ever seen. 

 

* * *

_The circle ends._

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> ok so russia please don't kill me. i love putin and his sexy, sexy chest on a horse.
> 
> here is a link to my tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/possiblyderangedpenguinstuff


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